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Astromancer Card Review

While the effect is not as restrictive as Spiteful Summoner‘s (which warranted a nerf because of how powerful it was in some builds anyway), you also need a right deck to play it. The one you’re looking for with this card is most likely a Midrange style of deck with lots of cards in the hand at the same time (duh). Which means that the most obvious deck choice for this card is Elemental Mage. This minion-based build generates A LOT of cards. Full hand is not uncommon in the mid/late game at all. Right now it’s not a great build, but it can potentially get better in the future. In that kind of deck, it would be a 7 mana 5/5, summoning a random 7, 8 or 9-drop most of the time (summoning 10-drop is not really possible, since you will only have 9 left in your hand when you drop it).

It could potentially be viable in Big Spells Mage too – a deck that tends to have a high hand sizes in the mid/late game. However, it just seems unnecessary. It just doesn’t go alongside the deck’s game plan. Like, you already CAN put more big threats into the deck, but it’s not the best way to go – Frost Lich Jaina is enough to outvalue most of the opponents. Since you can’t really remove any of your already weak early game, nor the removal spells, you would probably have to get rid of something like The Lich King or Sindragosa to fit this one, which I don’t believe is correct.

So while the theoretical power level of this card is pretty high, the main problem might be finding the right deck to play it in. I mean, we already have a perfect one – Elemental Mage – but unless it gets more support, it won’t likely jump from Tier 4 up to Tier 1/2 just because of this one card. But I’m pretty sure that even if not now, the card will be played at some point, because it can be a good late game threat.

giving this card to mage only is disgusting
giving this card to neutral should have been only thought/decision
giving this card to druid then warrior if not neutral should have been 2nd choice
giving this card to mage only you want to to fall asleep

With Dollmaster Dorian in play, one could theoretically get a 10-mana minion for free, if Astromancer were the tenth card draw. Stargazer Luna would help finagle that. A Murloc Mage deck perhaps, with plenty of cheap minions to enable the card draw until Astronamcer appears?

I wonder – the text of this card says “your hand size” not “number of cards in your hand”, with all other strange cards make feel they want to make some sort of cards that change the number of cards you can have in your hand.

Well mage has tons of cards that give you hand value. Mini chromagus(arugal) book of specters. Even in wild cards like babling book and archanologist also keep up your hand size the same while having board presence. Cabal courier is very good card even for the wild standards. Mountain Giant is elemental now. I wonder how much time will it take for the other minions to get their typing correct too. Since flamewaker and sea giant should also be elementals. But i guess game devs are not that concerned with wild format still. The bad thing is that tempo mage is kidna gone for now. Since aluneth mage took over as the better agro format with great win rates. But its still a nice card. We have seen a lot of useless cards released this expansion. ( mainly talking about the priest dissapointmen/ why don’t they remove priest for something like deathknight or w/e its not like priest is a fun class to play anyway.)

Oh and the epic tag is not really that good for this card. I can compare it with a wild card from whispers of the old gods. Faceless something – it used to summon a random 3 drop for you for a great boddy on 5 mana. It was a common card and it saw some play in agro mage. Not that much since it was way too much mana. And this is kinda worse version of it. I don’t see it putting that much agro on turn 7 and if you had a bad run againts one of the super fast deck you get with very little value from this card. 5/5 is not that good for a 7 drop and for the effect to make up for the little stats it gives you need at least a good 4 drop from it, than it gets to the stats of a vanilla 7 drop. Getting a 8 drop is the optimal value you get from it. And as spitefull decks used to say 8 drops are not enough.

This is another great example of Blizzard finally making a good card, THAT ONLY ONE CLASS CAN PLAY. THE PROBLEM IS THE —> ONE <— CLASS THAT CAN PLAY IT MAKES ZERO DAMN SENSE. The people in charge of this game, how can you possibly let this decision go through of allowing this card to be Mage only? Not Nuetral? Not Druid? Warrior? Oh you want us to fall asleep and play some slow mage that also makes zero sense if you played WARCRAFT MAYBE THE BEST GAME OF ALL TIME. Can you guys please start making cards for each class to make it feel like they actually should? Another classic case of a good idea going to waste because of incorrect categorization.

This can easily be okay for Big Spell Mage. In order to really make it playable you’d need to have five other cards in your hand when you play it, basically summoning two 5/5s for seven, and that shouldn’t be too hard. The only issue with it is Big Spell Mage probably wouldn’t care about the Tempo this’ll give them.

You could consider putting this in faster mage decks with Aluneth, but since it doesn’t deal damage, it seems a bit too expensive to put in those sorts of decks. This could combo with Book of Specters, but it still costs seven mana.

Perhaps a new sort of mage deck will be created with this card at its center that focuses on drawing to ensure this is always dropped while having nine other cards in hand. However, I wouldn’t count on it.

Stonekeep, PLEASE convince Blizzard to keep your name instead of Astromancer. It’s hilarious and the kind of winks we need with new expansions. As to the card: it might fit quite well in Big Spell Mage (who usually has a big hand) as a value generator. Ideal world is dropping this when you have 9 cards in hand, then you get to 8, which is generally the best possible mana-cost for random minions (9-mana cost has things like Dragon Hatcher, Master Oakheart…; 7-mana costs has Lynessa, this card, Spiteful Summoner, Lord Godfrey…). It’s impossible to get 10-mana minions from this (unlike the real Spiteful Summoner), so I think it’s fair it’s a 7 mana 5/5 instead of a 7 mana 4/4. I’m giving it 3.5/5 stars because I think it will be a good value generator for Big Spell Mage (although it’s already a tight list where it struggles to decide between Sindragosa and Alanna).

This card will not see play big spell mage. Big spell mage doesnt really have an issue with value generation, they have cards like Jiana, Allana, and Sindragosa. Big spell mage mainly struggles with being too slow against fast decks because thier only board clears are 5+ mana. And a card that adds minions to the board doesn’t really help big spell mage. If you need proof of this, i can show you that the current spiteful summoner doesn’t see play in big spell mage, despite the fact that big spell mage has expensive spells to active it. Spiteful sommoner didn’t see play in big spell mage, and i predict a similar future for the not so spiteful summoner.

I disagree. The reason BSM doesn’t run Spiteful Summoner is because the outcomes are bad on average. If you reveal Polymorph or Dragon’s Fury, it’s generally not a good enough minion. If you reveal Flamestrike you get stuff like Godfrey or Lynessa. 6-drops from Blizzard are generally not too bad, but Spiteful decks have only really been good with 8-drops or 10-drops. That’s why Spiteful Mage (which was an off-meta deck) ran Pyroblast. Now, with this, you play it when you can guarantee a 6-drop or an 8-drop, and it will be powerful. Maybe not in the pure BSM, but there’s an alternative Keleseth version that pushes for Tempo with Arcane Tyrants & similar. I think this would fit in even better there, but in any case, I WILL try this in BSM. Whether it makes the cut or not (probably not – BSM is already a tight list), is another matter. But this is miles better than Spiteful Summoner in BSM.

For consistency with Twilight Drake, this will summon a 10 drop if you played this with your hand full. Buff to control/big spell mage, and they don’t even have to worry about the cost of spells. Plus with the elemental tag on Mountain Giant, they can play that with Jaina as an 8 heal along with an 8/8

That wouldn’t be consistent with Twilight Drake. Remember, Twilight Drake is a 4/1 it starts with 1 health so when played with a full hand you go down to 9 cards, Twilight Drake gets +9 health to it’s starting 1 health and becomes a 4/10. So actually for consistency with Twilight Drake this card will summon a a 9 drop if you play this with a full hand.

Hand mage? Could be good I guess seeing as big spell usually has a huge hand early in the game. As well as mage now has an enormous amounts of draw mechanics between aluneth, arcane intellect, book of spect and Luna.